1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to reducing the bandwidth and computing resources required to transmit a web page over a network.
2. Related Art
It is desirable to transmit web pages in such a way as to minimize the bandwidth and other computing resources required to transmit the web page from a server device to a client device.
One popular technique for minimizing bandwidth requirements and computing resources is to store the web pages at multiple mirroring servers throughout the network. By “pushing content to the edge of a network” (that is, caching the content and serving it from a mirroring server), it is possible to minimize the distance (that is, geographical distance or as measured by network topology) that information must travel before reaching a destination client device. Although redistribution of the load among multiple mirroring servers improves the quality of service by minimizing distance, it does not necessarily affect the bit rate at which a web page is transmitted.
Another technique for minimizing bandwidth requirements involves compression of the web page. Compression generally involves the use of a computer program such as gzip, glib or some other similar program. Since HTML is very compressible (for example, the use of glib can result in 73.8% compression of HTML), there is a significant minimization in the amount of bandwidth required for transmission of web pages. One drawback to this technique however, is that compressing each web page is a relatively inefficient use of computing resources. Every time a web page is sent to a user, the page must be compressed, regardless whether the page was compressed in the past. For example, every time an organizational home page is sent from a server to a client device, computing resources are devoted to compression of that home page. In a second example, every time a server sends similar pages (such two different instances of an order form from an on-line retailer), those pages must be separately compressed without regard for their similarity.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide a technique for serving relatively non-static content for delivery in a content delivery network.